Rescue workers removed 12 bodies and 28 injured people from the rubble of an 11-storey residential building that collapsed in the central Turkish city of Konya, and work was continuing to find dozens more who were believed trapped, a local official said early on Tuesday.
The cause of the collapse was not known, but initial blame was put on shoddy construction.
One of the victims was a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, hospital officials said.
Konya Governor Ahmet Kayhan told Anatolia news agency earlier they estimated that at least 70 people remained buried under the wreckage of the apartment block, which had 36 flats and 138 registered residents.
It was not known how many people were inside the building when it crashed down late in the evening, on the second day of the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha when relatives and friends pay visits to each other.
”We are holding our breaths. There is nothing else to do but to pray,” said Agriculture Minister Sami Guclu, who was overseeing the rescue efforts at the wreckage site, a pile of rubble and hefty pieces of concrete.
”There are voices coming from the back of the building. There are obviously people alive. We are trying to reach them,” said Kayhan on the NTV news channel.
Rescuers were trying to locate a woman buried under the wreckage who managed to ask for help using her mobile telephone, Anatolia reported.
Residents, policemen and firefighters gripping flashlights were desperately trying to dig through the wreckage by hand, while others worked with welding machines to cut through steel rods.
Wailing relatives watched the rescue efforts as police tried to silence the crowd to allow rescuers to hear the cries of those trapped.
Several rescue teams, including a special army unit, were dispatched to help the city’s civil defence, which came under fire from locals.
”This is not called rescue. Inexperienced people with shovels and pickaxes are just running from here to there on blocks of concrete. They only managed to help people who were on the top of the building,” Kemal Ozer, a local resident, told NTV television.
”It is not possible to say that the work is going on very properly,” Kemal Ozkul, a Parliament member from Konya, said from the site of the wreckage.
Rescuers said the chance of finding survivors was high until Tuesday evening.
Initial reports suggested that an explosion in the building’s heating system caused the accident, but officials could not confirm this.
”None of the people living around the collapsed building confirms an explosion. That brings to mind the possibility of an engineering mistake,” Guclu told CNN-Turk.
And local mayor Mustafa Ozkafa said: ”It is almost certain that this was a collapse caused by an engineering mistake.”
Turkey’s construction sector is notorious for its low standards and is worst affected by widespread corruption plaguing the country.
Shoddy buildings have been blamed for heavy death tolls in earthquakes, which frequently rock the country.
Companies often disregard building regulations as authorities fail to enforce the law and sometimes collude with fraudulent contractors. — Sapa-AFP